The present invention relates to a medium edge guide in a medium feeder provided with a tray. The medium edge guide is adapted to be abutted on a side edge of a target medium, thereby aligning target media stacked on the tray and preventing a skew feeding of the target medium. The present invention also relates to a recording apparatus or a liquid ejecting apparatus incorporating the same.
The liquid ejecting apparatus is not restricted to recording apparatuses such as a printer, a copying machine and a facsimile in which a recording head of an ink jet type is used and an ink is ejected from the recording head to carry out recording over a recording medium but includes an apparatus for ejecting a liquid corresponding to uses from a liquid ejecting head corresponding to the recording head onto a liquid injected material corresponding to the target medium in place of the ink and sticking the liquid to the liquid injected material.
Examples of the liquid ejecting head include a coloring agent ejecting head to be used for manufacturing a color filter of a liquid crystal display, an electrode material (conducting paste) ejecting head to be used for forming an electrode of an organic EL display or a surface emitting display (FED), a bio-organic substance ejecting head to be used for manufacturing a biochip and a sample ejecting head to be a precision pipette in addition to the recording head.
The recording apparatus is not limited to a printer, a copier, or a facsimile which employs an ink jet recording head and ejects ink from the recording head to a recording medium, to thus effect recording. The recording apparatus is employed to encompasses an apparatus that performs recording on a recording medium in a dot-impact manner or a thermal transfer manner.
Description will be given by taking, as an example, an ink jet printer to be an example of a recording apparatus or a liquid ejecting apparatus.
The ink jet printer comprises, as a part of the ink jet printer or an accessory of the ink jet printer, a feeding tray fixed to a printer body, an automatic sheet feeder for feeding cut sheets, a feeding cassette for feeding cut sheets which is provided removably with respect to the printer body or a rolled sheet holder for attaching a rolled sheet.
There are provided a pair of edge guides adapted to be abutted on both side edges of sheets stacked on the feeding tray or a sheet supplied from the rolled sheet holder, thereby preventing the skew feeding of the sheet. Such an edge guide is provided with a guiding face abutting directly on the side edge of the sheet, and the guiding face is generally constituted by a vertical regulating face which is perpendicularly extended from a sheet mounting face.
When the guiding faces are entirely constituted by the vertical regulating faces, the regulation of the sheet becomes excessively strict, which is preferable for preventing a shift in the position of the sheet or the alignment of the sheets. On the other hand, in some cases in which a width of the sheet has a variation or a side edge of the sheet happens to be not straight, a frictional resistance acts on the side edge of the sheet from the guiding face so that the smooth feeding of the sheet cannot be carried out.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 2001-278500A discloses an edge guide in which a plurality of ribs are arranged on the guiding face of the edge guide and elongated in a certain direction relative to the sheet feeding direction, so that a frictional resistance can be decreased to smoothly feed the sheet. Also in the case in which such an edge guide is applied, however, the corner portion of the sheet is caught on the rib to bend the sheet or a skew is generated on the sheet to cause a printing defect during the feeding of the sheet. For this reason, there has been desired the improvement or development of the edge guide capable of smoothly feeding the sheet without depending on the quality or properties of the sheet.
Moreover, Japanese Patent Publication No. 2002-205828A discloses a movable guide having an upstream guiding face extending in a sheet feeding direction and a downstream guiding face continued from the upstream guiding face and inclining outward from the sheet feeding direction. In addition, the upstream guiding face is inclined outward from the normal direction of a sheet mounting face. Due to this inclination, in a case where many sheets are stacked on the sheet mounting face, upper ones of the stacked sheets would not be regulated strictly.